Senior agency’s vetting process fails family

Bob Glenning says he and his brothers and sisters relied on reassuring words from a senior assistance agency’s website when they sought a companion for their 85-year-old mother.

They were looking for someone trustworthy who could be there to help out when one of Bob’s sisters, who lives with their mother, was at work.Among other things, the site for Home Instead Senior Care of Albany said the agency’s employees, described as “CAREGivers,” are “thoroughly screened, extensively trained, insured and bonded and matched to your preferences.”

But within four days, Glenning and his family were alarmed to hear their mother report that the companion’s husband or boyfriend had sealed her driveway and was demanding to be paid $1,350 for a poorly done job.
After the companion was relieved of her assignment at Glenning’s brother’s request, the family soon discovered other problems. One of two stolen checks had been forged and cashed for $610. More distressingly, their mother’s engagement ring and wedding band were missing.

Jessica Paradiso

The companion, Jessica Paradiso, immediately was dismissed by the private agency, and now faces a maximum of six months in jail after pleading guilty to a felony grand larceny charge in the case.
The Glennings were shocked that such a serious breach of trust had occurred, in light of the assurances they had read on the website.
Hoping to learn more about Paradiso’s background and find information that would help them secure the return of their mother’s rings, they started scanning the Internet using a Google search.
They quickly learned that Paradiso, now 23, faced federal prosecution in 2008 on charges that she misrepresented herself as an IRS employee and persuaded a 95-year-old Schenectady woman to pay $1,550 for taxes she told the woman were owed.
The charges were outlined in an August 2008 Daily Gazette article about a federal warrant issued for her arrest and on the U.S. Treasury Department website.
Federal court records, which include a treasury agent’s affidavit describing the alleged crime, show that the case was closed one month after Paradiso’s arrest. According to authorities, the victim in that case died before she could provide testimony necessary to continue the prosecution.
And because there was no conviction in that case, the incident still does not turn up in a standard criminal record search that was conducted for Paradiso, at my request, by a law enforcement agency Friday.
“I would never have expected that the type of screening that was implied (by Home Instead) could ever mean that someone who had the background that she had could have been placed in my mother’s home, alone with my mother,” said Bob Glenning, who lives in New Jersey.
According to Susan Walter, the owner of the Home Instead Senior Care franchise in Albany, the agency’s screening of Paradiso when she was hired on April 19, 2010, a week before she was dispatched to Glenning’s mother’s home, included a “county-level” criminal background check, verification and other research based on her Social Security number, motor vehicle records and personal and professional reference checks.
“There was no record of wrongdoing in her past,” Walter said in a written statement, in which she said she cooperated with an Albany Police Department investigation of the thefts. “I regret this incident occurred because the safety and security of seniors served by my office is my top priority,” she said.
Paradiso appeared before Albany County Judge Thomas Breslin on Friday, when she was scheduled to be sentenced on her guilty plea to a felony charge of 4th-degree grand larceny. According to the terms of her plea, she faces a maximum of six months in jail and five years on probation, but Breslin agreed to delay her sentencing until December at the urging of her attorney, Assistant Public Defender Joseph Maney. Breslin made Paradiso’s continued liberty conditional on supervision by the county Probation Department.
Paradiso burst into tears when the judge agreed to hold off on imposing a jail term.
Breslin said he will ask for an updated pre-sentencing report for her December court appearance, and will look to that for guidance on a final sentencing decision.
Maney told me Paradiso, who has two young children, recently completed training at a cosmetology school, and he expects she no longer will seek work as a home helper or home companion.
“I think the court was pleased that she had taken steps to show that she understood how wrong it was, what she did, and she wanted to be worthy of a second opportunity,” Maney said.
I sure hope she plans to stay that course, because this case shows that there are some troubling loopholes in the licensing, registration and background-check systems that are supposed to protect vulnerable people from being victimized in their homes.
The first issue is, although Walters says a criminal background check was conducted on Paradiso, her job title did not make it mandatory. Even with a felony conviction on her record once she is sentenced, she still could qualify to work again as a companion.
Walters noted that Paradiso was working as a “home helper,” assisting with nonmedical needs such as meal preparation and light housekeeping. “My employees provide nonmedical services only. We do not offer home health or personal care services,” she said.
In fact, on the day she was arrested, Paradiso was ready to interview for a new job at a similar home help agency, Bob Glenning said.
An Albany County law mandates background checks only for home health aides and only for those health aides who work for agencies that contract with the county, said Mary Duryea, a spokeswoman for County Executive Michael Breslin. Home Instead is not among the county’s contractors, she said.
It’s also clear a criminal background check — while certainly important to weed out bad candidates — is not sufficient to fully explore the question of whether someone has the character and trustworthiness to be placed in the home of a vulnerable person.
Many employers in much less sensitive fields routinely check the web, including social networking sites, for signs of behavior or character flaws that would make a person unsuitable for a job.
“I am shocked that they didn’t do a simple Google search,” Bob Glenning said.
Even though certification or licensing and the associated criminal background checks are not, by themselves, sufficient, I still think they should be required for people who do work that puts them in a trusted position inside a vulnerable person’s home — not just work related to health care.
If nothing else, the requirement to undergo the background check, submit fingerprints and be listed on a state or local registry should help to discourage would-be criminals from seeking opportunities through jobs as home helpers.
“I think there’s too much nuance here in trying to parse the difference” between a home health aide and a companion or home helper, said Glenning. “It’s not too much to expect that somebody who is in the twilight of their life is going to get some absolute assurance that they are going to be treated appropriately.”

4 Responses

A “county-level” criminal background check is pointless, and almost criminally neglegent. Paradiso belongs in jail so her kids learn that crime never pays, expecially when you’re ripping off the elderly. Cutting her slack won’t teach her a thing. She’s a predator. If the judge cuts her loose she will no doubt prey upon another elderly victim.

Paradiso is an ironic name for someone who has put good, hark-working tax-payers through hell.

And what about this husband/boyfriend? How is it he is still walking around? Aren’t there laws against what he did?

A similar thing happened to my grandma the first night she was home after a long rehabilitation at a nursing home. The “licensed caregiver” stole ALL of her jewelry. Of course the agency had no way of getting in touch with the woman. Yeah right.